President Paul?

(Reprinted from the issue of June 21, 2007)

Is
it possible? Behold, there are signs that Ron Paul is now gaining
support. All his many virtues make him a misfit in the Republican Party,
which would love to be rid of him: He shames it by quietly and steadfastly
practicing the principles it preaches.

Over the years he has made enemies of George W. Bush and Newt
Gingrich; and he is a truer conservative than Barry Goldwater and Ronald
Reagan ever were.

This thoughtful, unassuming man has a rare ability to get under
peoples skin without trying to. The anger his gentle consistency
provokes is something to behold; its not the Democrats who detest
him, its the Republicans! He is, in spite of himself, a walking rebuke to
hypocrisy.

By rights Paul should be the hero of a Molière comedy, or a
Frank Capra film. Politics is mostly hypocrisy, and the man of simple good
faith can be a disruptive force, like the driver who observes the speed limit
when all the others are flooring it.

My own hope is that Ron will run for president on the Constitution
Party ticket, as the two big liberal parties nominate Hillary and Rudy.
Its not so much that I want him to win  wonderful though that
would be  as that even if he lost, he could outshine his opponents and
change the terms in which American politics is discussed.
Islam at War

A rather chilling article in the June
10 issue of The New York Times sketched various Muslim views
of whom it is allowable to kill in wartime, and under what circumstances.
Civilians? Children? Americans? Israelis? Sunnis? Shiites?

Of
course its a gross and unfair mistake to
assume that Muslims are unanimous about these questions, let alone
uniformly violent and pro-terrorist in their conclusions. Far from it, as
anyone with Muslim acquaintances knows. The debates among them are
subtle and nuanced, like similar debates in the West.

The very fact that these controversies occur attests to the
conscience and civility of these people. I doubt that the Mongols under
Genghis Khan agonized over morally permissible tactics.

Such problems arise now in large part because the Muslims have been
severely provoked by the Western powers, especially the United States,
where certain interests have long agitated for war between the U.S. and the
Arab-Muslim world. It ill becomes those who invade a country and kill and
sometimes torture its people to get indignant at the methods the defenders
adopt and justify.

Having said all that (and much more could be added), I must say that
my mind keeps coming back to one point. All this talk of legitimate
targets sounds like the way our own modern warrior-intellectuals
talk, but what it doesnt at all sound like is the New Testament.

Centuries after the Roman persecutions, when Christians had political
power, they did confront the problem of warfare in ways they hadnt
had to in the age of the martyrs. And their criteria for just warfare were far
more severe than those of todays U.S. government.

But even that is a secondary matter. More important is the fact that
so much of the Koran is concerned with war and violence. Never mind
whether it is right or defensible. Its simply strange. Im
baffled that anyone could think that Islam superseded Christianity, that
Mohammed improved on Jesus or even St. Paul.

Try to imagine the epistles to the Corinthians and Ephesians laying
down conditions for just revenge and decent polygamy.

Im not suggesting that Muslims are bad people; far from it. I
merely feel that Islam itself borrows from, and abridges, the Christian
message, while completely missing the essence.

Its rather as if you were to call Gandhi a failed general or
social engineer, when he was actually in a different line of work altogether.
The Genius of GKC

Great genius can be permanently
amazing, even shocking. Working on a book about Shakespeare for students
lately, Ive had prolonged exposure to Hamlet, and I never get over it.
How could any writer produce something so inexhaustibly wondrous?

Then, last week, a friend gave me a copy of another book I
hadnt read in many years: G.K. Chestertons little study of St.
Thomas Aquinas, The Dumb Ox. Ive always loved Chesterton, but this
time I felt the full force of his genius as never before.

I used to suspect Catholics overrated him a bit out of partiality to a
distinguished convert. Perish the thought! At his peak (where we often find
him) he is one of the greatest, deepest, most eloquent and joyous writers in
the English language, not far below Shakespeare, whom in some ways he even
excels.

What a gift from God Chesterton is. I pity anyone, especially the
young Catholic, who hasnt read him.

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